Evolutionary Science for Beginners - Monday, 1st Period

[anomaly_research_nerd]

Connor stood at the front of the class that morning, his typical cup of coffee on the desk beside him. Glancing at the clock to check the time, he cleared his throat and began, the lecture.

“So day one of actual lessons. It’s good to see you all here. So today we are going to talk a little about evolutionary science. What is evolutionary science, well it is commonly defined as the study of the history of life forms on Earth, how they adapted, and the ways they changed over time. This is done by studying ancient ancestors to modern plants and animals. It can help us to better understand how species evolve still today.”

Connor gave a smile to Cutter as he continued “For example, mosquitoes around the world today have evolved to be more resistant to pesticides such as DDT which means those chemicals are no longer effective against them. Mosquitoes evolved to adapt to their environment. By studying these sorts of changes that took place millions of years ago, we can better understand how changes like this impact us and the world today.”

“There are many different ways that the study of evolution can be applied to a particular subject and as such there are a number of different sub-fields in evolutionary science,” Cutter continued with a smile as he took over the lecture. “It can cover fields such as zoology, botany, microbiology, theoretical biology, experimental evolution and palaeontology. In addition to these several sub-fields, some of them have also been combined so we have evolutionary ecology and evolutionary developmental biology,” he paused. “We will be going into more in depth look at some of these sub-fields later on in the semester but the study of evolution is vast and with a lot of these topics, we can easily cover one semester with one subfield alone but today’s class is an overview of the theory so we won’t be getting to carried away just yet,” he said with a sheepish grin as he looked back to Connor.

“So for this first class, let’s talk about some of the areas of science that interest you in regard to evolutionary science. Remember, pretty much anything related to the natural sciences can relate back to evolutionary science in some way. For me, I’ve always been interested in palaentology which relates to evolutionary science in that they both involve learning about how the world was long ago and how it has changed over time. I have also always enjoyed technology, which can be very useful when it comes to research, data analysis, experimentation and more. So let’s discuss this further. What are some areas of science that interest you and do you think they relate back to evolutionary sciences in some way as you understand it?”

Try Not to Die, Monday, September 11, 2023

[sith_happened]

"My apologies for missing last week's class," Anakin said as he swept into the room. "I was detained in Connecticut. This class will be talking about the realities of diplomacy. In my galaxy--I'm what's known as a Jedi--diplomacy and combat aren't as separate as they probably should be. We were often deployed to far-off planets to negotiate between different factions because we were seen as impartial arbiters of justice."

He flashed a quick smile. "But there's also a lot of meeting various planetary leaders and pretending to care who they are. Today we'll practice that. Please write down your name and three facts about you. Then we'll pair up, give the other person your information and you will practice pretending that you always knew the information you're just receive. Let's see how well you can fake interest."